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Welcome Message from the President
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An Opening Night to Remember
There have been many ceremonies at Thomas M. Cooley Law School over the years. Honors convocations, graduations, welcoming luncheons, admissions to the bar. The one which stands out in my mind is the first night when we welcomed the inaugural Cooley Class. That night, January 12, 1973, of course, we didn't call them the Cooley Class. The practice of naming classes for deceased members of the Michigan Supreme Court had not yet begun. They were just the first class, the inaugural class.
Literally all of the people who came to Cooley in January of 1973 came because of the location of the school. They were older, mostly employed. Many were successful in their professions and occupations. A surprising number had post graduate degrees. There were several Ph.Ds. They were people who had long wanted to attend law school, but who were unable or unwilling to commute to Detroit to attend classes. Cooley was their main chance, and they gobbled it up.
So picture this scene, if you will: 76 students, almost all male, crammed into undersized student chairs, in parallel rows, filling a make shift classroom 25 feet wide and 50 feet long. At one end of the room, a table behind which were ensconced 13 men, nine of them in tuxedos. Standing three deep across the back of the room, and pressed against both side walls, stood a contingent of relatives and friends of the new law students.
Lou Smith, the Secretary of the school called the roll. Each student stood and announced the name of his or her undergraduate college, and detailed any post graduate degrees they held. The assemblage was impressive.
My remarks on that evening were eerily prophetic. It was a short speech, but one of the most heartfelt that I have ever given. This is what I said:
"Welcome.
"I bid you — I bid all of you — welcome.
"To the members of the Board — to the faculty — to our guests — and especially to you — the ladies and gentlemen of the first freshman class.
"I say, with unspeakable joy, welcome to the Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
"Others will come after you. There will be many, many other first days and first nights. There will be many other times to remember and to relish and to enjoy.
"But none so sweet — none so sweet as now.
"We are here, all of us, because we believe.
"Because we believe in ourselves. Because we believe in each other.
"And because we believe, whether we realize it or not, in a spirit which gives purpose and meaning to the things that men do quite beyond our poor capacity to understand or appreciate.
"In time, the Thomas M. Cooley Law School will be a great and distinguished institution of higher learning. And in that time, it will seem always to have been.
"It will seem to have a life of its own, independent of its officers, its faculty, even its student body.
"It will be seen and known in terms of its real estate, its library, its pension plan, its alumni, its publications, its corporate resources.
"But the genesis of human achievement does not lie in corporate resources or tangible, physical things. It lies in the unique and God-given capacity of the human spirit to envision what is not, but can be; to embrace what is unfulfilled and cause it to happen; to make an act of faith, and turn unreality into reality.
"It is given to all of here tonight as it is given to few men and women, to taste and feel and to know the power of human purpose. And we shall remember.
"But we shall remember too, despite our pride and satisfaction this night, that a long and difficult road lies before us. As we go down that road, let us ask or permit no excuses of each other.
"You have a right to expect that the Thomas M. Cooley Law School will embody all of the excellence in legal education that the great judge, scholar and teacher, Thomas McIntyre Cooley, represents in the history and tradition of Michigan and American jurisprudence.
"And we will expect no less of you than total absorption in the study of the law, total dedication to this institution, and a fierce, unyielding pride in what you are doing for yourselves and for your future.
"And in what all of us, together, are doing for those who will come after us."
I was not the only one full of prophecy that night. Jim Brickley, then Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, commented that people would one day marvel that there was ever a time when there was no law school in the state capitol. Then he added a rather salient observation:
"I'm sure that most of you do not realize what went on for several years to bring this day to reality. I've often said that it takes a lot of blood, toil, and sweat to bring about the inevitable."
And so, indeed, it did.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004